..one girl's endeavors into the world of organic food, one penny at a time

Category Archives: beets

As of late, I feel like the names of my meals have become more and more complicated.

I was so excited to come home and cook today. I had a long, frustratingly unproductive day in the chemistry building after an AMAZING weekend with my best friend from college. This meal came out better than I expected it to, and I absolutely attribute that to the sauce. I had a few moments of trepidation about mixing the sauce with the grains and greens, being afraid to ruin the dish, but it came out so. great.

Before I talk about that dish, first I want to share the pasta salad I took to a picnic I had with my visiting friend (Dani) and two new friends, Matt and Matt.

We went to Oliver Winery, bought a bottle of Moscato, and sat outside to eat the food we each brought. I had so many veggies to use up from the CSA that I thought mixing them with pasta would make a perfect picnic food. I don’t have any pictures of it, but I do have a picture from our picnic!

CSA Pasta Salad
–boil a 1 lb bag of rigatoni with 1 cup (cooked) black beans. When I’m making pasta salad I cook the noodles a little bit past al dente since they will be served cold
-while the pasta is cooking, toss 2 sliced beets, 8 chopped garlic scapes, and 2 chopped kohlrabi, including stems and greens in olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and salt.
-roast the veggies at 400 degrees for 20ish minutes
-add olive oil to the pasta and toss the veggies together
-add goat or another soft cheese and blend all together

This salad was so cheap. I had bought the pasta for $1, the leftover black beans cost me about $0.20, and all in all the CSA veggies were probably $3.25. That makes this salad about $4.50, but it lasted through the picnic and 3 more meals!

Anyway, onto the main meal I’m trying to blog about. I’ve been really, really bad about posting what I’ve been getting in the CSA as of late. This week I got Irish Cobbler potatoes (already gone, boiled them, then seasoned with olive oil, rosemary, salt, and parsley), Yukina Savoy, Kohlrabi, Cabbage, and a cucumber. When I came home, I went through the fridge and pulled out everything that *needed* to get used soon, along with some grains that had been sitting in my pantry for a while, and the tofu I opened last night.

tonight’s ingredients

Let me take you through my thought process:

1. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph that’s a lot of garlic scapes. I’m going to pickle those with the kohlrabi because I am getting sick of kohlrabi
2. I have a cucumber, garlic, AND plain yogurt? tzatziki- no brainer
3. Does tzatziki go with quinoa?
4. Does it matter?
5. I’m sick of eating greens raw so I’m going to sautee them.
6. I can add mint leaves to the tzatziki.
7. Browned tofu sounds really good.
8. I’m going to sautee the tofu/greens and serve them over the quinoa/barley, and mix in the sauce.

..and that is pretty much a look inside my brain at how meals are made.

If you’ve never heard of yukina savoy before, you’re not alone. I never had, either, before the CSA. If you’ve ever eaten in a Japanese restaurant before, though, you have probably had it, or something similar. It’s what I consider to be hardy. It sautees really well because it maintains some of its crunchy silkiness. if that makes sense.

-chop tofu, kohlrabi greens, and yukina savoy-coat a large pan with olive oil and add the veggies. Season with salt, pepper, cumin, and zahtar
-sautee, but also let sit for 2-3 minutes at a time to allow tofu to brown-combine quinoa and greens/tofu
-in a separate bowl, combine 1/4 cup plain yogurt, 1/4 finely chopped cucumber, 2 finely chopped garlic scapes, a couple dashes of salt, and 3 finely chopped mint leaves-combine, add black sesame seeds, and toss together in a large bowl

Like I said, I was worried about adding the sauce and ruining the flavors. The zahtar and black sesame seeds, however, went really well with the garlicy sauce. Also, I’m not sure when I got so into tofu, but it’s most definitely thanks to Becca!

Today I celebrated the fact my roommate is awesome. She bakes and shares it with me, she runs fast marathons, and she doesn’t judge me (even though I’m about to judge her for wearing leggings).

So, to celebrate, I made her dinner.

I had originally thought of making more beet pasta, since she missed out on the first go-around, but then I thought that I would make it special and pick up fish. I don’t know why, but a nice piece of fish is always my go-to when I want to have a really great dinner.

Becca doesn’t like salmon, so when I got to B-foods that left me with trout or tilapia. Hands down, I had to go with the trout. Trout and Lake Michigan perch are by far the two best fish ever. I cooked the trout on a bed of kale from the CSA, kohlrabi greens from the CSA, and swiss chard from our garden.

trout, kale, swiss chard, kohlrabi

The side dish was brown rice, which was cooked in vegetable broth I made the other day from a filled leftover produce bag. I chopped up turnips and kohlrabi for the rice.

Finally, I failed my dessert 😦 When I made beet muffins a few weeks ago, I dipped a slice of beet in the batter and thought it tasted awesome. So tonight I roasted beets and mixed sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ground ginger and tossed the beets in it. Then I fried them on my cast iron skillet. Pretty underwhelming, unfortunately. I think it would have been better had I added egg or, as Becca suggested, milk.

I’m really glad I got to use a lot of CSA veggies for this…they are seriously overflowing our refrigerator. I’m also pretty pumped I made a huge overabundance of rice so both Becca and I can have lunch tomorrow AND still have leftovers!

Clearly, this meal cost a bit more than I would normally spend, but I also usually don’t cook for 2 people. It ended up being $9.10/person. Plus, there was a ton of rice leftover, so I really don’t think it’s that bad, especially for a great piece of fish.

I still haven’t eaten all of my beetes (or turnips, or kohlrabi) from last week. This week I will be better. More cooking this week! I don’t know what happened last week, but I ended up being stuck with a lot of quick meals (aka cereal).

I have actually been thinking of making beet pasta for a few days now because I thought the color would be fabulous. I did a little searching and found a recipe that included ingredients I actually had here. I also think beets are unparralled when combined with balsamic vinegar, so I thought a balsamic vinegar reduction would be a perfect sauce. To make it better, I sauteed chopped garlic scapes in the reduction. (don’t know what garlic scapes are? neither did I- they’re the flower of the garlic bulb). You can see them in the plastic bag in the picture.

When I put it all together, the pasta was clearly missing something. No worries, manager’s markdown specials had me covered. In went the AWESOME goat cheese I just got at Bloomingfoods on sale- Capriole’s Fromage a trois caliente torta. It’s creamy and spicy and was the perfect addition to my pasta.

As an aside, you know what helps me keep from spending too much at the grocery store? Biking to/from the store and only being able to carry back as much as I can fit in my messenger bag. It was so hard to carry all this!

it doesn’t look like a lot, but try biking up a long ass hill with this in your messenger bag

Beet Pasta with Balsamic Vinegar-Garlic Scape reduction

–peel and slice 4 large beets
-toss in olive oil
-roast for 30 minutes at 400 degrees or until beets are fork tender
-puree beets
-combine 1/4 cup pureed beets, 2-1/4 cup wheat flour, 2 eggs, and a pinch of salt in a food processor and blend until a ball of dough forms *note- I had to add water to my dough in order to get a dough consistency
-coat a cutting board with flour and roll out the dough into flat sheets
-cut into noodles using a pizza cutter-boil until desired doneness

my new favorite trick! placing a wooden spoon over the boiling water keeps it from boiling over

Well, to be fair, I also haven’t spent a weekend in Bloomington in a long time, which isn’t helping me to use up the excess veggies.

(I never have the pretty box pictures where everything is laid out neatly inside)

From left, I have 3 kohlrabi, 4 turnips, 5 huge beets, a bag of mizuna, and a bag of pak choi. Leftover from last week, I STILL had 10 beets left.

Tonight Becca and I somehow perfectly orchestrated using the oven for 3 separate dishes. We combined our collective forces to make roasted vegetables (carrots, beet stems, tofu, and broccoli seasoned with olive oil, sesame seeds, paprika, crushed red pepper, and zahtar). I also got a chance to use my birthday present from my old roommate, Jayne!

This makes clean-up so easy!

The baking sheet underneath the veggies is PERFECT. It molds to any shape and nothing seems to stick to it. One drawback is that you dont’ seem to get the crispy veggies stuck to the bottom, but honestly, you also don’t have to clean that up, either, haha.

Keep in mind, today is also the hottest day of the year so far. Why Becca and I decided to roast/bake when it was 92 degrees at 7:30 PM is beyond me. (It’s 85 right now at 10:12 PM).

Besides putting together the veggies, Becca suggested I make beet muffins with all the beets I have. She made a chocolate cake. How we choreographed this is beyond me, but it was pretty awesome 🙂

Anyway, back to the beet muffins. They’re pretty good. I only used 2/3 of the sugar, and I think I should have used all of it because they definitely came out very beet-y (not that there’s anything wrong with that!). To sweeten them up a bit we used some of Becca’s silken tofu frosting she made for the cake. verrryyyy good.

I realized I never was able to post what I got in my CSA box on Friday!

The CSA is going really well..my pickup is on Friday and every Thursday night I’m usually scrambling to use up what I had from the week before. I think I also came up with a good way to quantify how much money I’m spending…well, a couple ways.

1. I walked around the farmer’s market the other day and realized that if I went there to buy the exact same things I get in the box, in the same quantities, I would spend much more. This makes me happy. (I think I’m spending more, though, than if I were only buying sale items…jury is still out).

2. Another way to determine it is to decide how many meals I am able to use my veggies in- for instance, with the lettuce I got this week I have made 5 salads and I have used the mushrooms in 2 meals. Once I’ve used all the veggies for the week, I’ll be able to see how much money each serving was. I think last week’s ended up being $0.50 for each serving. not bad!

Okay, back to the point. Here’s what I got this week:

lots of green this week!

Here’s what it is:
-a TON of romaine lettuce (you can’t tell that most of it is behind the brown bag)
-green onions
-Shiitake mushrooms
-radishes

So, last Thursday I had an insane amount of veggies left. I still had 3 beets, 3 turnips, and a whole bag of pok choi. I decided to pickle everything and see how it turned out! I’ve never pickled before, so I was pretty confused about everything. I mixed a couple different recipes…I happen to think it turned out amazing. Tangy and a little bit sweet, with an amazing color.

Pickled Beets

-chop beets/stalk/greens, toss in olive oil, and roast in the oven at 400 degrees for ~15 minutes
-simmer 1 cup vinegar, 1/2 cup turbinado sugar, 1 1/2 tsp salt, 1 cup water
-chop remaining ingredients while the beets are roasting (I did pok choi, turnips + stalk + greens, and romaine lettuce)
-once beets are out of the oven, layer vegetables in a mason jar and pour liquid over vegetables
-be sure all the vegetables are submerged
-let veggies sit in the refrigerator for at least three days (I ate some after 4, we’ll see if the taste changes at all as the days go on)

One of the hardest adjustments about grad school for me is that my work is never done. Sure, I may leave for the night, but there is always something more I could be doing. Like right now, for instance, even though my classes are over and I have turned in all of my students’ grades, I could be reading papers, writing a chapter I’m working on, doing experiments, planning experiments, analyzing data…really anything. That’s why sometimes when I come home, I really only have time for a quick meal. That’s why I LOVE to make salads. Especially roasted. An added bonus is that I can work (but truthfully rarely do) while the veggies are roasting.

This salad was especially good, maybe just because the colors were so pretty. When roasting beets, I like to use balsamic vinegar. I think the sweetness + acidity goes well with this vegetable.

Roasted Beet Salad

CSA goodness

-chop beets, leeks, turnips, and kale (use all parts of the vegetables- stalks/leaves/etc) and place into oven safe pan
-drizzle with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and salt

-roast in the oven for 15-20 minutes at 400 degrees C.
-serve over your favorite grain (I did couscous) or add some protein (toasted walnuts, tuna, egg, goat cheese, chicken would all be good choices)

serve over a grain- I think there's couscous hiding in there somewhere!

As for now, I’m having a hard time determining costs for individual meals, since each CSA box was a flat $16.25. In the upcoming weeks I’ll get this figured out so I can give a better idea.

Now onto things I can quantify. I’ve done a lot of grocery shopping lately. I want to do a better job this month of keeping track of my budget. I feel like I’m always good about it in the beginning, and then fall off the wagon.

So far for the month I’ve spent $40 and it’s only May 1st…. I don’t know what to make of my CSA. It’s a sunk cost so I don’t know if I build it into my budget or consider it a bonus supplement to my grocery shopping. Again, this is probably something I’ll figure out as the time goes on. So, what did I spend $40 on?

organic walnuts- 1.26 lbs at $8.29/lb- $10.45- I go in phases with walnuts. I’m currently on a love phase. I use them for everything- oatmeal, soups, salads, roasted vegetables (especially good roasted with olive oil and balsamic vinegar), and lately I’ve been having them as snacksorganic black turtle beans– 1.48 lbs at $1.39/lb- $2.06– I would like to start soaking my own beans instead of buying canned, since it’s supposed to not only taste better but be more cost effective. We’ll see, I suppose.organic short grain brown rice- 2.96 lbs at $1.49/lb- $4.41- With my new rice cooker that my sister bought me, I wanted to stock up on rice since it was on sale!organic bananas– 2.07 lbs at $0.99/lb – $2.05 – my biggest weaknessorganic orange juice- $5.29- still what I loathe buying organic the mostcage free/organic eggs- $1.99- we have somehow been going through eggs like crazy lately! organic carrots– 2 lbs, $1.99- my personal price point for carrots is $1/lb or less. Carrots are a veggie that I can notice a very real taste difference between conventional and organicKentucky blue cheese- manager’s special! $5.60- I’ve been getting a lot of great deals on cheese lately by looking for manager’s specials!organic milk- $6.69- I don’t know why milk prices have gone up, but it’s really annoying 😦

So, if we take a look at my groceries, it’s easy to see where the big budget breakers were- milk and orange juice. The milk, however, will last me 2+ weeks. The orange juice is what I take my iron with, and that lasts me about a month. The rice and beans will last a while- probably a few months. When you look at it that way, it’s not so bad.

Like I mentioned, I’ve been big on getting cheese from the remnant or manager special box at bloomingfoods. The cheeses I’ve gotten recently are goat gouda, cocoa dusted cardona, and kentucky blue cheese. The remnant section is great because it gives you a chance to try a cheese you may not normally. It also allows you to have an expensive cheese for a fraction of the cost and without the fear of it going moldy in the fridge. Plus, if you’re cooking for one, you can make a small chunk of cheese last a for a few meals. If you’ve never had cardona before, I would suggest looking for it. It’s apparently an artisanal goat cheese from Wisconsin. The creator of it got the idea from one of his favorite sandwiches- a piece of swiss cheese and a hershey bar on bread. I can barely detect the cocoa in this cheese, fortunately. Anyway, I know a lot of people are leery to buy food that is marked down to sell. I’ve never had a problem, though, and it certainly beats paying full price.